NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The Chicago Board of Trade is slashing fees to some European customers starting on Feb. 1 to boost interest in its new electronic trading platform, the No. 2 U.S. futures exchange said on Monday. Under the plan, European proprietary futures trading firms and trading arcades will be able to trade on CBOT's electronic system, dubbed e-cbot, until July 31, 2005, without owning or leasing a CBOT seat. "The e-cbot permit program is evidence of the CBOT's aggressive approach to increasing the exchange's presence through Europe and the rest of the world," said Charles Carey, CBOT chairman. The CBOT follows the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (nyse: CME - news - people) , which announced a similar program in November. The Chicago exchanges are going after business in Europe, especially from day traders and other liquidity providers, at the same time German-Swiss Eurex <DB1Gn.DE> hopes to attract U.S. traders with a Chicago-based electronic exchange. Under the CBOT's program, trading fees for e-cbot firms will be cut to 45 cents per side from 90c, a 50 percent cut. Participants can also qualify for a temporary waiver of CBOT's 15c per side delegate surcharge. The European traders must have a clearing relationship with a CBOT clearing member and register with the CBOT by March 31. Entities that now act as brokers for third parties will be ineligible. The CBOT has just shifted its electronic trading to a new system powered by Liffe Connect from the a/c/c platform operated jointly with Eurex for several years. In 2003 75 percent of CBOT's financial futures, its single biggest product group, were traded electronically, up from 59 percent in 2002. For benchmark 10-year Treasury note futures 81 percent of volume was electronic, up from 65 percent. Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service
Thanks, josbarr! What's the CBOT have against its US customers?! Btw, note that the 90c rate (for all customers) is down from $1.25 as of Jan. 1st. It's nice to see competition reducing exchange fees. Many thanks to Eurex!
So not having native stops at ECBOT should be compensated by realiable broker. Any good/bad comments on brokers that you use? Which broker is the most stable? How is IB, Refco?